As you may have seen, David's been taking care of OSNews for a few days because I'm quite busy with work. Still, there's one thing I'd like to talk about: the desktop mode in Windows 8. I wish I could've added this to the first impressions article, but I only arrived at this conclusion yesterday: desktop mode in Windows 8 is Microsoft's equivalent of Mac OS X's Classic mode.

More likely -- WinRT will grow to include a Desktop application model, fully replacing Win32 (but Win32 won't be removed for a long time [if ever] for compatibility's sake).

Also, the whole Metro vs Desktop is somewhat misleading since it's possible to create a Metro Desktop application (e.g., Zune). It was better when MS referred to Metro-styled apps as "Modern" at least when referring to the current, most visible, WinRT app type vs general Desktop applications. Maybe WinRTv1, since I fully expect WinRTvNext to include the Desktop.

The clues are already there with the squared corners on windows, the flatter (but still 3D) chrome, and the tweaked transitions. Pretty soon 3D window borders and shadows will fall to the wayside and we'll have what looks like Metacity from Gnome 2 with the Simplebox or Agata themes, if not a pure Openbox look (only brighter and bluer).